


Before the Storm

by Mareel



Series: Always [51]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Destroy Ending, London, Love, M/M, Memories, Post-Canon, Post-Mass Effect 3, Vancouver, dressing for winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 19:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9918896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mareel/pseuds/Mareel
Summary: There are things I want to say...





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is at their Vancouver home, just over a year after the end of the war. It is Shepard's voice.
> 
> Written for the Mass Effect Fan Flashworks prompt 'Intimacy'.

 

It’s quite a view from our deck right now. 

The sky and the water merge at some indefinite horizon - impossible to say where one set of blues and greys merge into the other. It should be time for the early December sunset, but there’s no trace of gold in the light. The clouds gather and separate; the wind is picking up and the sound of the waves hitting the rocks on the shore is becoming louder. It isn’t quite raining here yet, but it’s coming.

"Look at those clouds, Kaidan! Could be quite a storm on the way."

"Yeah, I was just noticing the whitecaps. Wouldn’t want to be out there in a small boat.”

It's our first winter in Vancouver, my first winter on Earth. At least one when I'm conscious. Last year in the hospital doesn't count. 

“Here. If you want to stand out here to storm-watch, at least put on something warm."

I smile and think of how much he sounds like his mother telling him he should have brought a sweater to Novaria, but when I slip my arms into the cobalt blue parka he offers me, I have to admit the warmth is welcome. 

I'd picked out this parka when Kaidan insisted we go shopping for winter clothing, mostly based on the way the quilting design on the chest reminded me of Kaidan's old hard suit armour. And it's the same color. Silly reasons, I know. But it was a warm October day and winter seemed far away, so I was having some fun with it all. . 

"Looking good there, _Major_." 

I want to kiss the smirk Kaidan is giving me as he teases with one of my old compliments to him... back in what seems like a long-ago life. 

"You look pretty good yourself, _Commander_." With his overheated biotic metabolism, he's probably not feeling much of a chill in my leather N7 jacket.

Thinking about his old armour makes me think about the last time I saw him wearing it... in London, just before the last battle. It had been a moment of stillness, a literal calm before the storm. A moment of surprising intimacy, eyes only for each other, oblivious to everyone around us. A time for remembering... a time for saying goodbye.

"What are you thinking about?"

"London, believe it or not. Our last meeting there... before we went to find our squads."

If my train of thought has surprised him, he's not showing it. "Yeah, that was something to remember."

"There's one thing I've always wondered about... something you said there, Kaidan. Maybe now I have the courage to ask what it was – those _'things you wanted to say'_ before you veered off into talking about the direction of your life. What did you want to say?"

Kaidan lifts both of his hands to my face, cupping it between them, meeting my eyes. With so little distance between us, we could well have been back there on that London street corner. 

"That I loved you. Had loved you for so long. Would never stop loving you... I told you later, on the battlefield, so no regrets."

"Why didn't you want to say it then, when we were about to say goodbye?"

His gaze drops for a moment as he replies in a low voice. "I wasn't sure you wanted to hear it... and the last thing I wanted to do was to distract you or disturb your focus. You needed every bit of that to have any hope of coming back to me alive."

I wrap both arms around him and pull him against me. The blue down-filled armour offers no resistance to the embrace. "It wouldn't have disturbed me. But you were always protecting me. Do you know how much I missed that when we were apart?"

He slips his hands behind my head and touches his lips to mine. "Yeah. The hard times. I guess it made the good times taste sweeter... maybe. I don’t know. I just wanted to be your safe place to turn to when things got rough."

His gentle kiss wasn't enough and I kiss him again, deeply, letting it linger. Memorizing the shape and taste of his mouth all over again. "You were a refuge I didn't know I needed. And you were hope."

"Hope? How so? I always thought of you as the one building hope. For us all.”

I turn us both to watch the clouds rolling in and the waves rising with the wind. "Hope that the storm would pass and you'd keep that promise... to hold me again."

"It did, because of you. And I will. Always."

 


End file.
